Morgan Stanley Investment Management has reopened the doors to its Global Infrastructure Fund for new U.S. investors and announced plans to make a similar strategy available to international investors later this year.
"We expect the massive investment in infrastructure ... will continue to create significant opportunities in companies around the world," said Michael Nolan, the fund's portfolio manager.
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Morgan Stanley Investment Management (MSIM) announced today that the Morgan Stanley Global Infrastructure Fund1 – the largest infrastructure U.S. mutual fund2 designed to provide exposure to the growing universe of publicly traded infrastructure securities – has re-opened to new U.S. investors. MSIM intends to make a similar strategy available to international investors later in 2009.
"We expect the massive investment in infrastructure – resulting from urbanization, aging infrastructure in developed countries and demand for new infrastructure in developing countries – will continue to create significant investment opportunities in companies around the world that build, operate, own or provide services to infrastructure assets," said Michael Nolan, Managing Director and lead Portfolio Manager of the Global Infrastructure Fund. "To stimulate their economies, governments in countries around the world such as Brazil, China, Germany, the United Kingdom, South Korea and Australia are accelerating implementation of infrastructure projects. In the United States, President-Elect Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan will invest in priorities like energy and education, health care and a new infrastructure that are necessary to keep the country strong and competitive in the 21st century."
"Gaining exposure to publicly traded infrastructure companies via the Morgan Stanley Global Infrastructure Fund allows investors access to this attractive growth story with lower capital requirements, greater diversification potential, daily liquidity and transparency," said Randy Takian, Managing Director and Head of Morgan Stanley Retail & Intermediary Distribution in the U.S. "As we continue to grow our product line, we remain focused on delivering innovative, actively managed solutions to our investors. We believe infrastructure is one of several alternative investment opportunities that can enhance our investors’ portfolio efficiency, increasing return per unit of risk."
The Morgan Stanley Global Infrastructure Fund blends best in class, sell-side fundamental research with a proprietary quantitative portfolio construction process. The investment team’s systematic, multi-strategy investment approach strives to add excess return while targeting a beta of approximately 1 to the S&P Global Infrastructure index. The Fund’s investment universe consists of approximately 800 stocks and provides broad exposure to the infrastructure sectors as defined by the S&P Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), as well as a range of communication stocks and other companies that are likely to benefit from infrastructure spending.
The opening of the Morgan Stanley Global Infrastructure Fund follows several recent, innovative fund launches offered by MSIM for individual investors, including Morgan Stanley Alternative Opportunities Fund (September 2008), Morgan Stanley Frontier Emerging Markets Fund (August 2008), Morgan Stanley Commodities Alpha Fund (May 2008), Morgan Stanley Global Long/Short Fund (January 2008) and the Morgan Stanley FX Alpha Strategy Portfolios (August 2007).
The Morgan Stanley Global Infrastructure Fund is managed by the Quantitative and Structured Solutions (QSS) Equity investment team, part of the QSS group at MSIM. The QSS Equity investment team, led by Michael Nolan, has four portfolio managers and manages $1.4 billion assets as of December 31, 2008. The team’s collective experience encompasses active equity management, quantitative research, financial modeling, analytics, structuring and analysis of derivatives, as well as expertise in risk management, trading and technology.
MSIM is the Fund's investment adviser. MSIM, together with its investment advisory affiliates, has nearly 1,000 investment professionals around the world and approximately $399 billion in assets under management or supervision as of November 30, 2008. By leveraging its global ‘community of boutiques’ structure and the strength of Morgan Stanley, MSIM strives to provide outstanding long-term investment performance, service and a comprehensive suite of investment management solutions to a diverse client base, which includes governments, institutions, corporations and individuals worldwide.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS - News) is a leading global financial services firm providing a wide range of investment banking, securities, investment management and wealth management services. The Firm's employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, institutions and individuals from more than 600 offices in 37 countries. For further information about Morgan Stanley, please visit www.morganstanley.com.
1 The Global Infrastructure Fund was formerly known as the Utilities Fund and had a principal investment strategy of normally investing at least 80 percent of its assets in equity securities of companies engaged in the utilities industry. The Fund’s Board of Trustees approved, effective on November 3, 2008, changing the Fund’s principal investment strategy to investing, under normal market conditions, at least 80 percent of the Fund’s assets in equity securities issued by companies located throughout the world that are engaged in the infrastructure business. In connection with this change, the Board also approved a change to the Fund’s name as well as its benchmarks, and increased the limit on the Fund’s investments in foreign securities. To allow for the implementation of these changes, the Fund suspended the offering of its shares to new investors effective August 21, 2008.
2 The Global Infrastructure Fund is the largest infrastructure U.S. mutual fund based on assets under management.
There is no assurance that a mutual fund will achieve its investment objective. Funds are subject to market risk, which is the possibility that the market values of securities owned by a fund will decline and that the value of fund shares may therefore be less than what you paid for them. Accordingly, you can lose money investing in these funds. Please be aware that this fund may be subject to certain additional risks.
Risk Considerations
There is no assurance that a mutual fund will achieve its investment objective. Funds are subject to market risk, which is the possibility that the market values of securities owned by the fund will decline and that the value of fund shares may therefore be less than what you paid for them. Accordingly, you can lose money investing in this fund. Please be aware that this fund may be subject to certain additional risks.
Infrastructure Companies. Infrastructure businesses include the risks of the potential for realized revenue volumes to be significantly lower than those projected and/or cost overruns; the risk that the nature of the concession fundamentally changes during the life of the project (e.g. the state sponsor alters the terms); and macroeconomic factors such as low GDP growth or high nominal rates raising the average cost of funding, government regulation which may affect rates charged to customers, government budgetary constraints, the imposition of special tariffs and changes in tax laws, regulatory policies and accounting standards. Other risks include environmental damage due to a company’s operations or an accident, changes in market sentiment towards infrastructure, and terrorist acts. Foreign and Emerging Markets. Investments in foreign and emerging markets entail special risks such as currency, political, economic and market risks. Utilities Industry. Because the fund invests in the utilities industry, the fund is susceptible to economic, political or regulatory (or deregulatory) risks or other occurrences associated with the utilities industry. Derivative Instruments. Derivatives can be illiquid, may disproportionately increase losses and may have a potentially large negative impact on the fund’s performance.